never had this one before – from aliexpress

i got this email relating to an aliexpress order
Order Id 505893640202305 – Package arrived in local post office

Dear stephen parkinson,

Package arrived in local post office , for more information you can track it here.
ORDER NUMBER :505893640202305.
TRACKING NUMBER :JV422669036GB.
View detail tracking information
Sincerely,
AliExpress.com
2018-05-17 03:30
This is an automated system email. Please do not reply to this email.

srp

Hmmm.. It wouldn’t surprise me if HM R&C have decided to sting you for 50p in customs duty on an item worth £2

The only time I have had to pop down to the Post office to collect anything was when it was too big to fit through the letterbox, and/or it required a signature, but I was out when they attempted to deliver it.

@andy
if you go to their tracking site (royalmail.com), you can setup your details and or schedule redelivery and also give them a safe place for them to leave it. it also works for all mail that needs a signature or too large as well. mine’s the furniture shop 3 doors away.
stephen

I’ve received that email for some orders. I didn’t need to go down to the post office to pick it up or anything.

I think AliExpress or some of the vendors have made some arrangement with the local post offices to give them domestic arrival notifications for some of the shipping methods where they don’t have real tracking information.

I have received hundreds of these messages. In all those cases and most other cases, the goods have arrived at my address without any additional actions. In practice, the only exception has ben a heavy CNC router that arrived in local port and had to go through customs and after that I had to pick it up from a warehouse.

I get all sorts of these, as well as texts from the local postal service asking me to specify a delivery location e.g. home , or local post office or office etc

I ignore them, as I gave the delivery address when I ordered the good, and don’t think I should need to tell the local postal service whether I will be in or not.

I think they local postal service are trying to save money by not attempting to deliver it to my home, as it’s cheaper for the to dump all the post at the post office and force everyone to drive miles to pick it up.

Since privitisation the quality of our local postal service has declined sharply

This week i had 2 orders that also had something i rarely experience on aliexpress: shipment cancelled…
They just didn’t bother to actually ship the item -_-…..

i’ve had a case where the seller cancelled the shipment and then send a message with a new tracking number, do look out for it

[ag123 – Sun May 20, 2018 2:07 am] –
i’ve had a case where the seller cancelled the shipment and then send a message with a new tracking number, do look out for it

folowwing up on the orders
one of both said i can dispute, get refund and then reorder
waiting for response of the other one

although there’s a knocker on the door, from the noise generated by it, postal person is a 0.2st weakling. if i hear it from my usual location, my bedroom, then it’s a sprint down the stairs, i think they must run back down the path.

now they put a card through and i walk to the safe place, much easier.
also give them a safe place for them to leave it. it also works for all mail that needs a signature or too large as well.
srp

[racemaniac – Sun May 20, 2018 7:31 am] –
folowwing up on the orders
one of both said i can dispute, get refund and then reorder
waiting for response of the other one

ot:
hmm, i’m wondering if postage costs increased, they ran out of stocks or whatever
recently i ordered some (mechanical) keyboard switches, as soon as i ordered, stocks ran out and the new listings (different vendors) placed a higher price tag for the same thing, some times market demand is amazing, mechanical keyboards flying off the shelves? it would seem a little strange if suddenly there is a big fad for mechanical keyboards
viewtopic.php?f=3&p=45357#p45357r
back on topic:
yup dispute / get refund etc, just in case the seller is after all unscrupulous

stll ot;
i thought vendors in general seriously disliked the opening of a dispute, their rating being affected as a result.
srp

I never had a problem with AliExpress apart for some EPS32 modules which I pre-ordered and the supplier was taking far to long to supply, so I simply cancelled the order as they had not upheld their side of the contract.

BTW. From 1st July this year, there is a new tax in Australia which will apply sales tax of 10% to all goods bought from overseas, regardless of whether those goods would have the same sales tax if sold by a local retailer.

eBay will automatically add this cost to all orders, so I think I will be buying more items from AliExpress, because I don’t think they will be applying the sales tax to their prices.

I have to pay a currency conversion charge on orders from AliExpress, on my credit card, but it’s somethig like 2%, so it will still work out more cost effective to buy from AliExpress or perhaps even Taobao

I am interested to hear feedback from the board members about the experience of different Taobao agents. So far, I have been using only Taotrend and I was quite pleased with their fees and practices. It took quite long time, but that was expected. They collected several items from different sources together to reduce the number of shipments. I didn’t ask them to take the items out of the packages to reduce the shipment weight. I can recommend them based on the few times I have purchased from Taobao.

[Ollie – Sun May 20, 2018 10:56 pm] –
I am interested to hear feedback from the board members about the experience of different Taobao agents. So far, I have been using only Taotrend and I was quite pleased with their fees and practices. It took quite long time, but that was expected. They collected several items from different sources together to reduce the number of shipments. I didn’t ask them to take the items out of the packages to reduce the shipment weight. I can recommend them based on the few times I have purchased from Taobao.

I used yoybuy a while ago, but had problems because on two separate orders, of the same boards, one of them they decided to put into a heavy cardboard box, even though it was some boards the same size as the BluePill. Yet the other order they put it in an envelope.

So I ended up getting charged a huge postage cost for a large heavy cardboard box, which was 10x the price of the order !

I see that world.taobao.com is now supposed to be the worldwide portal for TaoBao, however it still seems to use a separate intermediary shipping agent, and looking at the buying process, it still looks like they can choose to add additional charges at the shipping stage.

So unless something was much cheaper on Taobao or not available elsewhere, IMHO its still very risky buying from Taobao.

i think taobao & aliexpress is pretty much merchant sites under the alibaba group of businesses
with taobao being more oriented towards the chinese local market. it did seem to me that some merchants on taobao do not ship overseas but only locally within china, i’m not too sure if that’s true

there is another one www.jd.com which apparently a competitor of www.taobao.com, but a search for stm32f103 on www.jd.com did not turn up the familiar blue pills etc

[zmemw16 – Sat May 19, 2018 11:12 am] –
i got this email relating to an aliexpress order
Order Id 505893640202305 – Package arrived in local post office

Dear stephen parkinson,

Package arrived in local post office , for more information you can track it here.
ORDER NUMBER :505893640202305.
TRACKING NUMBER :JV422669036GB.
View detail tracking information
Sincerely,
AliExpress.com
2018-05-17 03:30
This is an automated system email. Please do not reply to this email.

srp

going back on topic for a second
For me that’s quite a common mail, but that’s because if i miss a package, it’s indeed at the local post office, and i can go collect it there then .
Seeing this thread, i assume it’s not usually like that in other countries?

as i said never had this particular message before.
i would suspect that the seller has relatively recently discovered this ability (for the uk??) ?
so to me, it’s an improvement in communication

stephen

ok i’ve my share of disputes this time from aliexpress, interestingly for many other ‘cheap’ i’d guess common and lower demand products e.g. i’ve ordered 10x74hc595, 10x74hc165, 10xuln2003 and even 3xblue pills, they all arrived without any fuss
then out of the blue i got sufficiently inspired, nope incorrect – implusive
after getting various rave ideas about building an own (stm32duino) keyboard
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3543&start=20
i started looking for mechanical keyboard switches
http://www.kailhswitch.com/mechanical-k … -switches/
and ordered on aliexpress, and to no surprise for these *high value products* (hotly in demand) all of a sudden my order is cancelled somewhere along the logistic chain within china, now i’ve had to open a dispute to settle it
those cherry-mx switches (and clones) must be a billion $ industry, guess i’d need to be more innovative to find other keyboard solutions
after all logitech, microsoft and various ‘unbranded’ keyboard manufacturers managed to bring keyboard prices down to almost usd 10 for a whole keyboard